A Crazy Cambridge Contraption

lhdentra writes "A few friends and I got bored one weekend and decided to build a contraption. Remember the Honda advert? We think ours is better." This took dedication.

Comments

for the clueless

[Anonymous Coward]

honda commercial

Slashdot is getting scooped by memepool now.

Re:for the clueless

[amembleton]

The wheels' centre of gravity is offset, so it is above the centre of the wheel. This means that as the wheel slowly rotates, its centre of gravity starts to fall whilst the tyre itself appears to climbs uphill.

Re:for the clueless

[Sinus0idal]

The Honda commercial wasn't original - it copied an old short film Der Lauf der Dinge (The way things go)... Imdb link

Re:for the clueless

[madprof]

"In fact this slashdot page is the only thing that told me it was a honda advert."

That's the point! This Slashdot page just did some of Honda's marketing for them. The ad is such that at least a fair number of people will discuss it and even if you don't remember which car manufacturer it was, you'll be reminded by someone else.

The ad is really very brilliant. Great entertinament, but also a very effective way to spread the brand image.

Re:for the clueless

[quiddity]

search google for lauf.mov
or
http://www.tcfilm.ch/MOVIE1/lauf.mov

Re:for the clueless

[Richard_at_work]

According to the official reports, the tyres had bolts from the car taped to the inside wall about halfway up, so it would cause the type to move uphill.

Re:for the clueless

[ErikTheRed]

And all of these pay homage to the old Rube Goldberg cartoons from the early 20th century.

Re:for the clueless

[ralphclark]

Possible, but just as likely homage to that British fellow William Heath Robinson who did the same sort of cartoons as well as many other types including fantasy art etc. Examples of his mad machines used to be found here but most of the images had to be taken down because of a breach of current copyright. A rather odd idea considering that these mostly date back to the 1910's-1930's.

There are still a few perhaps more recent examples viewable via the wayback machine eg. here and here and here.

You should have built...

[Anonymous Coward]

a high bandwdith server first.

Re:You should have built...

[VC]

Mirrordot.org mirror of the video

ummmm.. down.

[peculiarmethod]

I wanna see the contraption, but the thingy-ma-doo went ka-blooey.

That's the most obvious slashdotting-bait site.

[AtariAmarok]

That it, describe something that sounds interesting. On the web site, make big the mistake of forgetting to add a nice little PNG or JPG of it so we can see what the big fuss is about. Instead, ask EVERYONE to download between 5 and 12 megs of movie file just to see what it looks like. Oh yes, and host it on a low bandwidth server. If that is not slashdotting-bait, I don't know what is!

Re:Pictures, anyone?

[Concerned Onlooker]

Sure. Right here.

Oh, That Cambridge

[Feneric]

It took me awhile to figure out that this was Cambridge in the U.K. and not Cambridge in Massachusetts with the site currently being /.ed.

Isn't it nice when things just... work?

[Lisandro]

Oh, wait, site's Slashdotted. Never mind!

I downloaded both movies yesterday or so

[drinkypoo]

This was on memepool before it was here.

"The Contraption.avi" is 8368078 bytes and "machine.avi" is 5851896 bytes. If someone wants to do a torrent I'll upload to them but I've never made a torrent and I'm not starting right now.

Slashdotted...

[brilinux]

But we had to do something like this for my final in my eigth grade physical sciences class ... we got to use all the chemicals and lab tools in the classroom, and it started by rolling a ball. Different groups worked on different parts, and the point was to be able to use physics and chemistry to provide the mechanisms for the machine to work. It was a lot of fun, and actually seemed to do a good job of testing us on our knowledge of the physical sciences.

Re:Slashdotted already

[Exstatica]

i have a mirror of it. http://www.exstatica.net/slashdot/196237/ enjoy :)

jolly good show

[Stalyn]

Oh dear
What is it?
I've spontaneously combusted
Well, I am sorry
Oh it's quite all right, I've grown tired of living
Ah, very good then
For the best
Yes indeed

Re:Faked Honda Commercial

[po8]

I believe the tires were weighted internally to achieve this behavior. Counterintuitive, but not cheating.

The real end to the the contraption...

[bryz]

Apparently the real end of the contraption took a few days, a few internet posts, a bad internet connection and a slashdotted server.

Mirrored

[Exstatica]

I created a mirror... http://www.exstatica.net/slashdot/196237/ enjoy :)

Link

[Ceirren]

Thanks to mirrordot for the...well....mirror http://mirrordot.org/stories/4a5348d4e9a30ecdb1883 7ab66bcbcbf/index.html

Re:Got them, can't view them

[Buttonius]

Winamp5 does fine (on my XP machine at least).

Pure Genius (And Coral Link)

[g_bowskill]

Wow, this looked really awesome! Much more realistic than the Honda one (Which was still pretty cool) in my opinion.

I managed to get to it via coral:

http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk.nyud.net:8090/lwh21/ma chine/machine.avi

Enjoy!

Re:Pure Genius (And Coral Link)

[Karma Farmer]

Wow. You've raised a perfectly valid point. It's amazing that no-one else in this thread has addressed this issue.

What's it like to be so smart and well informed?

Got the torrents up :)

[xbmodder]

The contraption.AVI http://thebrokenwargames.gotdns.com/con.torrent and the machine.avi http://thebrokenwargames.gotdns.com/machine.avi.to rrent the honda video will be up in a few minutes. stop downloading it if you can. I need the video to make meta.

Re:Got the torrents up :)

[xbmodder]

ok i got cog.mov up and running. Umm could i have some donations. My hard drive is grinding. heh message me! cog.mov (honda commercial) is here: http://thebrokenwargames.gotdns.com/cog.mov.torren t

But this IS the contraption!

[AtariAmarok]

The slashdotting was all part of the plan. This story is not about a contraption. Rather, this story is just part of a contraption:

1. Slashdotter creates site that requires each person to do a 12 meg download to find out what is on it, and submits it to Slashdot.
2. Timothy looks at it, decides it is cool. In the process of looking at it for review, he slashdots the site.
3. "Contraption" story is added to Slashdot. Thousands hit it within seconds, further banging away at some fragile server in the UK.
4. UK server-farms transformers start to smoke. One explodes.
5. Power spike would seem rather small, but it does make its away through an Atlantic cable where it hits an electric relay system near Cleveland, Ohio.
6. Cleveland's vintage "Enron meets East German War Surplus" relay blows out. Cleveland once again has a big blackout. Free TV's for all: loot early and loot often!
7. Ensuing crises causes calls for demands for the resignation of United States energy secretary.
8. Energy sec is good friend of President, so he can't fire him. But he has to do something, so he sacks the Surgeon General.
9. Without a surgeon general, health standards go down, including dental standards.
10. I get a nasty tooth-ache.

Thanks a lot, lhdentra!

Their next contraption should be:

[TheGuano]

...a DIY steadicam:

http://slashdot.org/articles/04/04/09/1929235.shtm l?tid=188&tid=97

Never mind the Honda ad...

[b00le]

this is the true original.

The way things go (Der Lauf der Dinge) by Peter Fischli and David Weiss, 1987
Inside a warehouse, a precarious 70-100 feet long structure has been constructed using various items. When this is set in motion, a chain reaction ensues. Fire, water, law of gravity as well as chemistry determine the life-cycle of objects - of things. It brings about a story concerning cause and effect, mechanism and art, improbability and precision

- and it lasts 30 minutes. Hypnotic, beautiful

Re:Never mind the Honda ad...

[shannara256]

[The way things go (Der Lauf der Dinge)] is the true original.

Yes it is. It's very well done. I got it for Christmas, and about half of my extended family - maybe a dozen or so people - watched the whole thing in near silence.

They do, however, cheat a few times. They really like the foam step, because they're able to use it as a checkpoint - get from A to B, stop, set up B to C, restart the foam reaction, film from B to C, and so on. The Honda commercial is very well done because it's brief (some of the steps in The Way Things Go take as long as the entire Honda commercial), it's clear (there aren't any chemical reactions, for example; judge for yourself if that's good or bad), and the whole thing is done in one shot.

They're both good, just for different reasons.

Rube Godwin

[AtariAmarok]

" I've never seen it but I have been told about one called the "Hitler Killer" which was started when a hen laid an egg "

See title. Rube Godwin's Law was named after the fact that in any fierce Internet argument (first Usenet, now elsewhere), whenever someone discusses ungainly contraptions, someone will always ask "but can you kill Hitler with it?"

mirroring

[yack0]

web server on fire...

the original

the edited type movie

The honda wagon commercial - still a classic

Enjoy

Re:Faked Honda Commercial

[Ellis D. Tripp]

From what I have heard, the reason for the CGI during the muffler roll was simply to allow the video to be edited together.

The room that the machine was set up in wasn't long enough to incorporate the entire setip, so it was done in 2 parts, with the rolling muffler being the transition shot between the 2 halves.

Re:DIY - Incredible Machine

[yack0]

As I recall, they used weights in the tires to make them go uphill.

Indeed, an article (which I found from googling) describes it.

http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jht ml ?xml=/news/2003/04/13/nhonda13.xml&sSheet=/news/20 03/04/13/ixhome.html

Talks about the nuts and bolts in the tires themselves.

Re:Let the Slashdot effect begin!

[Chrispy1000000 the 2]

Please stop trolling, thank you.

Re:Faked Honda Commercial

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the only cut in the Honda cog is at the exhaust (muffler) section when it rolls across the floor (because they couldn't fit all the components in), apart from that and the 606 takes later, its all real, we discussed this here when the advert was first released

Of course the big hoo-haa was Honda (or their agency) was taking all the credit and collecting numerous prestigous creative awards when they (or their ad company) blatently "borrowed" the idea from Rube Goldberg's "Lauf der Dinge" (the way things go) without giving any credit to Rube, all while giving some bullshit story about being inspired by Mousetrap (the board game) if you see Rube's film (1987) you will see the plagiarism for yourself.
I guess Picasso was right ? "good artists copy, great artists steal"

That is, award winning multi million dollar production companies certainly do.

playing videos on Windows

[Tumbleweed]

If you're on Windows, you want the K-Lite Codec Pack ; this collection of codecs (& Media Player Classic) will let you play just about anything you're likely to come across. Plus you can play QuickTime and RealMedia files in MPC, and not have to use their respective crappy players.

If you're having trouble playing that Star Wars Episode 3 trailer you just downloaded, this'll to watch it just fine.

Re:Should not take you long

[Tumbleweed]

The British can actually say words which comprise more than one syllable

Huh?

Better than the honda commercial??

[ramk13]

If they are going to claim it's better then they should at least produce something comparable in quality. The main problem, that someone else mentioned here was the camera work. The they probably had a tracked camera for the honda commercial, not a person frantically running around trying to keep up with the events. Also a lot of the pieces of the system moved too fast. You could barely see a few of the balls that moved from place to place because they were moving fast so the camera moved fast to track with them, which left a nice blur for us to look at. Those things on top of the professional look of the Honda commercial vs the college dorm room look of this setup made the whole thing way disappointing.

All that said. I'm sure it took a *lot* of time and effort, it was cool to watch. It's just annoying for them to say 'ours is better' just to get more attention. If they had just said, here's a cool rube goldberg contraption, take a look, I wouldn't have been let down at all.

Re:Rube

[miner60]

Yes he would.

Myself and about 15 of my friends recently entered one of these contraptions into the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. Purdue University hosts the national contest every year where winners of several different regional events compete to have the best working, most complicated Rube Goldberg machine. This year the task was to remove two old batteries from a flashlight, replace them with new batteries, and turn the flashlight on. Former tasks have been casting a ballot, making a cup of coffee, sharpening a pencil, and many more. There is a minimum of 20 steps to complete the task and the machine has to fit in a 6 ft. cube (I belive). Machines also usually have a theme which their machine is based on. Our particular machine had a theme of Las Vegas with all the various steps involving differet Las Vegas casinos, with the Luxor being our flashlight (a light at the top of the pyramid). The winning machine this year at the Purdue regional was a very impressive work of engineering. Of course, the winners had put 3600 man hours into their machine. I believe their theme was space.

If you have a chance to participate in the Rube Goldberg contest, I would recommend taking it, because it is a really good experience.

Re:Should not take you long

[arb]

The British can actually say words which comprise more than one syllable

You mean like advertisement?

Re:Rube

[RichardX]

So would Heath Robinson, especially as he was British